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Letters of Convicted Ala Church Bomber Now Open

blog.al.com

Birmingham's public library has a new resource about the city's civil rights history: Letters written from prison by one of three Ku Klux Klansmen convicted in a deadly church bombing that killed four black girls.

The library obtained the letters written to and by Robert Chambliss and opened them for public use on Wednesday, the 35th anniversary of his trial.

Archives director Jim Baggett says Chambliss never admits any wrongdoing in the letters.

A retired agent says the FBI obtained the letters from a niece of Chambliss and gave them to the library.

A jury convicted Chambliss in 1977 of setting the bomb that killed four girls at Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963. He died in prison in 1979.

Juries convicted two other men in later trials.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

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